For many a year my mother and I have had arguments in her kitchen about the
“bin area”.

This zone is in a dank cupboard beneath her sink. It comprises two plastic
boxes — one recycling, one normal — each no larger than a celebrity’s clutch
bag, and no more practical. The first can accommodate the cardboard core of
one loo-roll; the second, three eggshells and a tangerine pip. Each is lined
with a plastic bag but many a rotting foodstuff has escaped its true
destination and instead edged down between the outside of the bag and the
suppurating inside of the